State Disciplines Six Nurses

The state Board of Examiners for Nursing disciplined six nurses this week, including several cases of nurses who abused drugs or alcohol.

On Wednesday, the board revoked the license of Michelle Murphy, a registered nurse from Longmeadow, Massachusetts, for violating an earlier probation by not submitting drug test results to the state Department of Public Health, records show. In April, the board had placed her on probation for two years based on findings that she took the painkillers fentanyl and Dilaudid for her own use and abused controlled substances to excess, records show.

The board also revoked the license of licensed practical nurse Adam Burr of New Britain, who was intoxicated while working for PSA Healthcare of Plainville doing care in a patient’s home, state records show.

The board found that Burr’s abuse of alcohol and an emotional disorder or mental illness he has suffered from since 2013 were affecting his ability to practice nursing.

The board also revoked the license of RN Enid Gonzalez of Bridgeport for taking personal and confidential items from the home of a patient in 2014 while working as a visiting nurse for Hartford Healthcare at Home in Norwich, records show. The records do not indicate what the items were.

The board suspended the license of Mary K. Field, an RN from Burlington, with records showing she tested positive for codeine in September and Oxycodone in November while on probation.

Field has been disciplined by the board previously. In November 2015, the board found she had abused the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in violation of an earlier probation. In 2015, she was placed on a four-year probation, with records showing she had used hydrocodone, an opioid painkiller, in excess in 2013.

This past August, the board accepted her testimony that she had regularly attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings and reinstated her license. But now, records show, she has tested positive for drugs again, so her license was suspended.

Also on Wednesday, the board suspended the license of Hester E. Munyon, an RN from Norwalk, with DPH officials saying in records that her abuse of alcohol and cocaine poses a “clear and immediate danger” to the public.

In April 2015, she was hospitalized for alcohol detoxification and was diagnosed with several alcohol use disorder and severe cocaine use disorder, records show.

In October 2015, Munyon pleaded guilty to first-degree reckless endangerment and received a suspended prison sentence of one year, records show. DPH has no documentation that she has undergone substance abuse treatment from this August to the present, so it recommended her suspension.

The board reprimanded the license of Cherry Cuizon, an RN from Madison, for failing to disclose on her Connecticut license renewal form that she had been disciplined in California in 2014. Records show that she surrendered her California license for inappropriately keeping hypodermic needles and the anti-nausea drug Zofran in her purse while working as a nurse there. She also failed to adequately account for controlled substances and made false statements in medical records about dangerous drugs, records show.

The board also placed Cuizon on probation until she completes courses on maintaining medical records and preventing medical errors.

C-HIT writer Bonnie Phillips contributed to this story.

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Out of work and addicted to the anti-anxiety medication Klonopin, Heather Delaney, a licensed practical nurse from Stratford, checked herself into Bridgeport Hospital in 2011 when she could no longer handle withdrawal without medical help.